Get Your Property On Rightmove If You’re Looking For Tenants

A few days ago I had some letting agent shister shamelessly promote his own company under a fake alias on my blog by masquerading as a satisfied customer. Sadly, that kind of embarrassing marketing tactic is unsurprisingly common, especially among estate/letting agents.

I don’t really want to make a big deal about his actions, because I’m sure he made himself accountable for his actions and punished himself appropriately. However, what I found interesting was that he, let’s assume he was a genuine customer, claimed to have found tenants with the use of a free property portal, and specifically without the help of Rightmove.

That got me thinking. His underlying message was, “you don’t need Rightmove to sell your home“, which is actually true, but I wouldn’t shout it from the rooftops in case someone actually heard and misconstrued it as good advice.

However, there’s still, very surprisingly, a lot of value left in local advertising, and highstreet agents still capitalize from its potency. The local gazette will still manage to fish out a dinosaur or two in the market to buy. But the problem is, local advertising isn’t scalable and it’s becoming less effective everyday.

So, while I agree, you don’t need Rightmove, whether it be to sell your home or find a tenant… you’d be an f’ing idiot not to. I’m sure this is common sense to many of you reading this, so this is for the benefit of the novice.

But let’s focus on the tenant-finding aspect, because we’re landlords. Basically, if anyone is trying to encourage you to find tenants without the use of Rightmove, I would pay no minds. Failing that, you’ll instantly squash your odds of finding tenants, or at least to in any reasonable amount of time.

There is currently no substitute for Rightmove

Love them or hate them, Rightmove have monopolized the online property space and have that shit tied up into a tidy little bow. You want to buy or rent a property? Get your shit on Rightmove. Want to sell your car? Get your shit on Autotrader. Want a Landlord Blog? Stay right here. That’s just the way it is.

Whether you’re using a high-street letting agent or an online letting agent, it doesn’t really matter, just ensure your hired help is going to whack your property on the most popular property portal in the UK, Rightmove. There is no substitute for the moment, and that’s precisely why Rightmove get away with continually making agents teary-eyed when increasing their rates.

My experience with Rightmove

Whenever I’m looking for tenants, Rightmove is at the heart of my strategy. Every other medium used is just an added bonus.

Rightmove has generated by far the most enquiries for me, with Gumtree in second place (but it must be noted, Gumtree notoriously produces lower quality leads).

Don’t get me wrong, there have been times where I didn’t source my tenants from Rightmove even though I was advertising on there. But nonetheless, they’ve still been the most effective and consistent for generating enquiries.

How to advertise your rental property on Rightmove

Getting your property onto Rightmove is easy, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. The only catch is you have to go via an letting agent because Rightmove doesn’t deal directly with individual civilians off the street- you people are chumps. But there are plenty of online agents to choose from, and one of the most popular ones, OpenRent, even offer you the service for FREE (no strings attached- you’ll get your vacant property on Rightmove for free). You can read my full review on Openrent. So there really are no excuses.

The expensive, but allegedly hassle-free option is to use a high-street letting agent. Most reputable ones with any sense will market your property on Rightmove as part of their marketing tactics. Likewise with Online letting agents, only they’re significantly cheaper, but the landlord is obligated to do more of the leg work (e.g. take the viewings).

Either way, I don’t care how you do it, just get your property on Rightmove if you’re looking for tenants.

You can do it without Rightmove

I just want to throw this disclaimer out there (again), because I know many will be itching to throw their unsavory, conflicting opinions this way. And sure, I may act interested. But I won’t be.

As already said, there are plenty of different methods of finding tenants, many of which are extremely effective and don’t involve Rightmove. However, marketing on Rightmove will give the landlord the biggest possible advantage, and the likelihood of reaching out to more prospects than any other medium. For the smidgen of effort and money required to make it part of your marketing campaign, it really doesn’t make sense to avoid it, even if your confidence lays elsewhere.

Zoopla is probably Rightmove’s biggest competitor right now, and many people rave about them, but in terms of popularity, Rightmove is still dominating. Significantly. If I had to choose between the two, I’d choose Rightmove every damn day of the week.

The above graph shows how much more traffic Rightmove gets compared to Zoopla, although I wouldn’t bet my left bollock on the accuracy. But the actual conclusion is almost certainly true.

And just as a warning, many online letting agents say they’ll market your property on 500+ property portals for something ridiculous like £10, and to the naked eye, that may seem like an extremely compelling proposition. They’ll also provide you with a list of each of those portals, and some of the names may seem extremely impressive, like The Sun, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, AOL, MSN etc. But if it doesn’t mention Rightmove, ignore the flashing lights. That bullshit list is just smoke and mirrors. Those websites combined couldn’t even find you an ex-convict DSS tenant.

Do you know how many people visit the Sun website to find vacant properties to rent? Me neither. But it doesn’t matter.

Quick question for the landlords out there: do you make Rightmove a priority in your marketing campaign? Is it essential to you? Or are you indifferent, and refrained from making them the be-all and end-all of your strategy?

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16 Comments- Join The Conversation...

Jackthelad11th July, 2013 @ 07:18

Yes but as you own Rightmove you have a vested interest of course! ;)

1

The Landlord11th July, 2013 @ 07:50

Ha! I wish! If I owned Rightmove this blog would cease to exist. Instead, I'd have an instagram feed, which is updated daily with pictures of me on a yacht, surrounded by high class, gold-digging prostitutes! The good life.

2

Glennym11th July, 2013 @ 08:33

I agree with this post. Rightmove is the market leader and by far the best way to find tenants. I use Rightmove via OpenRent and within 7 days I had roughly 20 enquiries and had already vetted and accepted a tenant.

I can't remember the last time I opened the local newspaper to look through property listings.

3

Bingola11th July, 2013 @ 09:11

I don't get it. Do you or don't you recommend Rightmove?

You're normally so plain-talking, but I just can't gauge how you feel about these guys.

Glennym, I still need to try out Openrent! The folks over there seem to have their shizzle together.

How was your experience?

6

Bingola11th July, 2013 @ 15:17

"Bingola, I can't tell if you're being facetious or not :S "

Haha, as facetious as the period where all the dinosaurs were really sarcastic ;)

Don't worry, it was patently clear that Rightmove's mansack was getting a liberal moistening throughout - your agenda's as clear as it's ever been.

For what it's worth, I agree fully. I like Zoopla, and I do think one should use both and then some, but for now, Rightmove's where the traffic is - so that's where your billboard should be.

7

Glennym11th July, 2013 @ 15:25

Landlord

OpenRent were pretty good and I will be using them again. Their system does lack in usability though. For example they claim that they offer insurance but that option was nowhere to be found when I was looking for tenants. Also it's not always clear what's happening. I found myself emailing them a few times because I had no idea what stage we were in the referencing.

There's definitely work to be done but in terms of cost and the amount of enquiries I got I would happily go through the confusion again to get my next tenants.

8

Roon13th July, 2013 @ 15:08

Rightmove every time, only question I get asked from gumtree ads is do you take DSS.

9

andrewa14th July, 2013 @ 22:21

And in south africa it's privateproperty.co.za followed by gumtree.co.za followed by property24

Great blog and having looked at Uk site i agrre with you. in Austrailan use realestate.com.au or domian . No one goes to an agent because even the agents use the same web sites.
Lea

12

Adam Warren16th November, 2013 @ 20:43

I have many clients who are Landlords and I always recommend Right Move the main reason for this is the EMAIL ALERTS, when tenants are looking for properties they can sketch an area of interest and other specifics like bedrooms etc and they will be emailed with latest properties. If yours is one of them you could be hitting hundreds of potential tenants just by posting your property.

13

Andrew5th July, 2014 @ 14:38

The landlord got bullied in school!

14

Stuart Woolgar2nd November, 2014 @ 18:09

We have been using Zoopla for over a year now and although it brings some good quality people to become property guardians with our company, this blog post has given me food for thought concerning Right Move.

If it is true about the traffic that is provided by Right Move then I am sure we will begin to trial it's services.

For a company that is expanding quickly we are always on the lookout for better ways to advertise our services to potential customers to become property guardians.

At the moment this is a niche market and the closest thing to it is the world of tenants so Right Move looks like a good angle.

www.global-guardians.co.uk

15

Stuart Woolgar16th November, 2014 @ 15:07

I recently went to the Landlord Show at the Olympia (Kensington) and saw an interesting talk by the CEO of a company called Move Bubble.

They are pushing the way to the future of the lettings industry by bringing landlord and renter together without the need of estate agents.

I was quite impressed by the talk and will be looking at this as another way forward for the industry.

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